


When Not to Let Go

by Frostandstarlight11



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Feysand always wins, Mor is a babe, Rhysand feels, Tamlin continues to suck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 11:33:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11622663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frostandstarlight11/pseuds/Frostandstarlight11
Summary: Rhysand is finally home after his time under the mountain, but ghosts from his past continue to haunt him -- particularly one with brown hair and grey blue eyes





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my idea of what would have happened after Rhys got home after Under the Mountain/how he would cope with being Feyre's mate (still unfinished). Inspired by another work I found on AO3 detailing similar events. Written for my nug (always). Enjoy!

Morrigan

The pages of a book crinkled beneath my fingers as I skimmed them across the text. I tried to focus but the words kept blurring. Even when I did manage to make it through a line, I couldn’t remember what it had said. Sighing, I gave up and closed my book. As I reached across myself for the pot of tea steeping on the table, I realized my fingers were shaking. I couldn’t get past the news I had just discovered, couldn’t think around or beyond it. I could do nothing but hope and pray it was really true, nothing but wait and see.

Rhys was alive. Rhys was coming home. After nearly fifty years of silence in my head, fifty years of being bound to the city of Velaris, Rhys was finally coming home. I couldn’t think about where he had been for the past fifty years. I couldn’t let myself imagine all the horrors that he had witnessed, all the atrocities he had endured. Those weren’t what mattered right now. All that mattered was that my cousin was safe, and that he was finally coming home.

Last night as I had been falling asleep, a beautiful and melodic voice had filled the deplorable void in my head, a voice I hadn’t heard in far too long. Rhys had told me the barest details about what had happened — that Amarantha was dead, that he was safe, and that he was coming home. I was to meet him the next morning in the palace atop the Court of Nightmares, and I wasn’t to tell anyone else in the inner circle about his arrival — not yet. He said he needed time to process, needed a moment to breath before being thrust back into his role as High Lord. I had barely slept that night because I couldn’t stop weeping tears of joy, couldn’t stop hoping that this was really true, that this wasn’t something my subconscious mind had dreamed up to keep me from breaking. But as I sat in the palace now, waiting for Rhys’s arrival, I couldn’t believe anything except that it had really happened. It had to be true — I wouldn’t have been able to leave Velaris if Rhys wasn’t free, so it had to be true.

I was startled from my thoughts by a star flecked wind of night weaving through the sunny air flowing in through the open windows. His scent hit me all at once, citrus and jasmine and the smell of home, and I watched in disbelief as he materialized seemingly out of thin air. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that he was really here, that he was really alive. For fifty years I hadn’t dared let myself hope, holding all my emotions at bay. But as I took my cousin in, fifty years worth of pain and angst and sorrow came crashing into me. He winnowed into the room and I moved to fling myself into his arms, but before I could reach him, he sank to his knees. I could hear the crack of his knees colliding with the marble floor. He was looking at the empty space in front of him, eyes filled with panic, hands outstretched as if he was reaching for something. He seemed to realize all of a sudden that I was standing in front of him, tears streaming down my face, and he raised his terror-filled gaze to meet mine.

“She’s my mate,” he whispered hoarsely. Then, again, louder this time, “She’s my mate.” And then he roared at the top of his lungs, the cavernous space around us filling with his voice, “SHE”S MY FUCKING MATE!” And then he collapsed in on himself, his body shaking with what appeared to be sobs as he melted the rest of the way to the ground.

I stood there in shock, trying to process what he was saying. Rhysand had a mate. My cousin had found his soul-bonded partner. So where was she? Who was she? I carefully folded myself to the ground beside him, pulling him into my arms and holding him tightly as we both wept, me tears of joy at finally seeing him again, and him tears of anguish that were clearly related to whoever his mate was. Cauldron, he had been gone all this time, suffered through horrors that no one should suffer, and still somehow managed to find his mate. I held him as he sobbed, pounding his fists on the floor and rocking back and forth as if to try and escape from inside his own head.

Minutes or hours later, when he had finally composed himself enough to speak, he pulled himself from the floor and finally met my gaze again. His eyes were red rimmed, his lips cracked, his normally golden skin pale and sallow. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes looked haunted by horrors that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. And then he suddenly seemed to realize who was sitting in front of, and a smile lit his face as he pulled me into a fierce embrace. I wrapped my arms around him as he held me tightly. I could feel the corded muscle of his arms as they encircled my back, the feeling of home. When at last he broke our embrace, he pulled back and looked at me, seemingly at a loss for words. I was without words as well; I had no idea what to say to him, how to react to the display of anguish I had just witnessed, but I pulled myself together enough to say, “Who, Rhysand? Who is your mate?”

“Feyre,” he whispered, her name like a prayer on his lips. And then I felt a gentle caress down my mental bond and I lowered my shields, allowing him inside to show me what had happened.

I saw stone walls and smelled fear on the air, and then there was a scuffling down a corridor that branched off the room I was in, and someone was shouting. A hideous gray beast with wings and a long snout rounded a corner dragging someone along with him. She trashed against his viselike grip, and when I saw her face, I froze. I — Rhysand — had never known such panic as in this moment, when this woman, Feyre, was dragged before Amarantha. Human, utterly human, and fragile, and breakable, and now completely at the mercy of that bitch who had been holding us all underground for the past fifty years. Cauldron, she was beautiful. Even bloody and bruised, she was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. She showed such strength — I knew that she was a fighter, and she would not cease fighting for who and what she loved; not ever. Even if it meant facing Amarantha. Even if it got her killed.

He flashed me quickly through the events of the following three months, of how he had helped Feyre survive just to watch her die as he was helpless to save her. How he slipped into the minds of the other high lords and convinced them to bring her back as he held onto that last little piece of her, as she clung to that mating bond she didn’t even realize existed. How he watched her be resurrected, only to crawl back to that lowly coward who was willing to let her risk her mortal life for his immortal one. How he had called her up to that balcony, and then how the mating bond had snapped into place and he had winnowed here.

I was pulled violently out of his memories and left reeling. I didn’t know what to say, what to think. I could barely remember how to breathe. I looked at his face for a long minute, absorbing every detail I hadn’t seen in so long, memorizing his features, noting a few new scars. I could read the pain in his features as easily as I could read a book, but I had no idea how to ease it. I said the only thing I could think to say.

“I’m sorry. Rhys, I am so, so sorry.”


	2. Interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I haven't finished writing this yet but will hopefully come back to it soon. Anyways, enjoy this awesome scene we all wanted from Rhys's point of view in which he crashes Feyre's wedding (and angers the Tool)

3 Months Later

Rhysand

Standing in front of a mirror, the sun backlighting my figure, I straightened the lapels on my jacket, brushing a piece of lint from my sleeve. I needed a distraction. Any kind of distraction. Anything to pull my focus from the thoughts that had been swirling through my head all day.

Feyre was getting married today. She was getting married to that bastard Tamlin, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. It wasn’t my place to interfere, I reminded myself for the hundredth time. If she was happy, then I could let her go. After everything she had been through, all the horrors she had endured, she had earned that happiness. Even if it killed me to know she was sharing my enemy’s bed. Even if it was a constant dagger in my heart. Even if I loved her.

I did. I loved her. I had realized it in those moments under the mountain as Amarantha had beat her to death, in the seconds before she had snapped her neck. Along with the realization that she was my mate came the realization that I was madly in love with this beautiful, cunning, wicked creature. It had killed me to stay away all these months. Some nights I swore I could feel fear and pain shudder down the bond between us in the middle of the night, and all I wanted to do was be able to reach out and comfort her, to hold her and tell her she would be all right. But Feyre was her own person who had the right to make her own choices, and she had chosen Tamlin. Just because I knew we were mates didn’t mean I had some kind of claim to her, and no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t bring her to the Night Court. If I did, she would accuse me of kidnapping her. She would hate me forever, and even if she didn’t love me back, I couldn’t bare the thought of her hating me.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to break the bargain between us. I would give her her space and her freedom, but I selfishly couldn’t break this last visible tie between us. And it was because of that that I was stuck in this perpetual limbo, this purgatory where I loved her and she didn’t reciprocate and I knew, I knew, I needed to let her go, but there was never any way I could do that. She was my mate. My fucking _soul bonded partner_. How could I simply move on from that? Could I let that sort of bond go?

  
I pulled myself out of the thoughts that were threatening to drown me and dragged myself back to the present. My mate was getting married to another male tonight, and there was really only one way I could distract myself from that: get so drunk that I couldn’t see straight. Cassian was to meet me at Mulligan’s Barstool at sundown, and as I looked outside the window of my Townhouse room I realized the sun was just beginning to set. I straightened my cuffs one last time and was about to winnow out into the streets of Velaris when I felt a sharp pang of fear wobble down the mating bond between me and Feyre. I froze, uncertain what to make of it. I swore to the Cauldron, if that bastard was hurting her —

Help me. Please, help me. God, is there anyone there? Please, someone help me! I heard her voice bridge the gap between our minds. I froze, drinks with Cassian forgotten, as an ice cold wrath settled over me. Whoever was causing her such distress was going to pay dearly, most likely with their life. I would make sure of it. But I reminded myself of who I was, of who she was, and the position that I was in. I couldn’t go to her. I couldn’t cross into my enemy’s territory.

Please, is there anyone there? Someone, help me! Her words snapped the leash I had been holding myself on and before I could think what I was doing I had plunged into the fabric of the world, carried on a star flecked wind to the sound of her voice.

I materialized in the middle of a garden, surrounded on either side by hundreds of rows of seating, standing on a path laden with red flower petals. I recoiled at the contrast between the plush green grass and the dark red petals, so like the color of blood. Her wedding, I thought, and before anyone could realize who it was standing on the aisle between their High Lord and his fiancé I schooled my features into the cool neutrality I so often had to present. Taking in my surroundings, I saw as the people sitting before the altar began to understand who it was that had just winnowed into their territory, watched their eyes widen with fear as they scrambled back to find an escape. Then I looked up and the frightened guests were forgotten as my eyes found Feyre’s and I registered the shock and fear there. Fear at having to decline Tamlin’s offer of marriage, but also fear of me. After all that had happened between us, she still feared me. It was like a shard of glass through my heart.

I examined her features, her hollow cheeks and dull, sunken eyes rimmed with dark purple bruises. She was so damned thin in that huge, gaudy wedding dress, all wrapped up in tule and gossamer, the pretty little High Lord of Spring’s present. Seeing her dressed up like that, forced into that role, had anger rising to the surface so quick I almost didn’t subdue it in time. Rage coursed through my veins, fueling my resolve to keep this mask on, just a few moments more, just long enough to get her away from this place that was so clearly killing her.

“Hello, Feyre darling,” I purred as I continued to don that mask that I knew frightened her. But I had to believe that she could see beneath it, could understand that I was here to help her, not to hurt her.

Hatred was so thick on the air you could drown in it. This court was filled with hatred and repression and it was going to kill her eventually if she was left to wallow in it. Did no one else see what being in this place was doing to her? Was everyone so blind to the fact that she was wasting away, or were they simply ignoring it so as not to upset their High Lord. Hatred was the look that crossed Tamlin’s face, hatred and disgust as he took me in and drew the conclusion I was here to collect on my bargain with Feyre. Let him believe whatever he wanted, because he was powerless to stop me in this.


End file.
